


Needles and Hammers

by RonnieWriting



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Game of Thrones Fusion, F/F, F/M, Frozen AU, Game of Thrones References, Inspired by Game of Thrones, blacksmith kristoff, gendrya au, kristanna au, lady Anna, lots of references to canon GoT but nothing too related to deep lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:07:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24555901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RonnieWriting/pseuds/RonnieWriting
Summary: Kristanna short au inspired by the gendry and arya events in season 8 of Game of Thrones! Bastard blacksmith Kristoff reunites with the Lady Anna of The North as they prepare for an oncoming war from farther North...
Relationships: Anna/Kristoff (Disney)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> basically I needed to get this au out of me and I've finished my last big assignment so this is my self indulgent reward- An update will come soon for A Tide of Ice and Blood but I wanted to get this up first because I didn't need to think much about it or look through a stack of notes on original lore haha!  
> It's not my finest writing but again, its really just for fun :) enjoy!

As soon as he was off his horse he was in the castle forge, throwing his weight behind a hammer and playing songs of metal on metal as he worked smoldering steel into weapons. Like the so many times Anna had seen him before in forges, he worked shirtless, arms sweltering in the tendrils of the steam, and an honest-built chest glistening with sweat. When he arrived on his horse in the horde he was as clean as she’d ever seen him, he almost looked like a stranger without a mask of dirt and soot that made every one of his features scream.

He didn’t look right against all the snow and whiteness of The North- golden skin and yellow hair called for his real home, in King’s Landing, where the storms were of water and wind and not _more snow_ \-- But, despite it all, he looked on fire. 

Even out of the forge he surged with heat, his heart the forge, eyes like coals- that now looked up to burn straight through her. And she realised she preferred him muck and all.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” He asked, plunging a glowing sword blade into a bucket of water. The first words he’s spoken to her since seeing him last- seven years felt like seven centuries- and they floated like the cloud of steam that rose around him, airy but thick with the scent of warm copper- like blood.

Instead of entertaining him or his words, she sauntered closer, past the amorers and other men milling about with armfuls of swords and the like, and picked up a fresh forged axe from the rack. She held it up in the light of the fire and pressed her fingers against the side of the blade, “This is fine work-- you’ve gotten better.”

He huffed, the hint of a smile betraying him, and moved the cooled sword blade onto a workbench where it was swiftly taken over to be fit into a hilt, “Thanks, so have you.” He looked up, eyes widened at what he said. His mouth hurried to keep up with his words, “I mean, you look-” eyes dropping for a second, to quickly rise again to her eyes, “good- well.”

Her lips quirked into a little smile. While Kristoff looked mostly the same since she saw him last, hair a bit longer, shoulders impossibly wider, she must’ve looked worlds different. Anna had grown her hair out from its hacked cut she wore while traveling undercover as a boy, it fanned out across her shoulders now, half back in a twisted knot. Her clothes changed too, no longer baggy and ill-fitted, she wore a leather overshirt with pointed shoulders and a layered, sectional skirt like the ones her father used to wear all under a study cloak. 

_Anna’s father- another man she hadn’t seen for years now- yet this one would not come back, in any way. Certainly not in steam or fire._

“Thanks, you do too.” Anna turned and dropped the axe back onto the rack, spinning again to find Kristoff had already picked up another red-hot rod from the forge coals, “How do you like The North?”

He began to pound the metal flat between his words, “Suppose it wouldn’t be a bad place to grow up- for a girl at least.” Kristoff stopped mid-swing of the hammer, “‘least your balls wouldn’t freeze off.”

She found herself distancing slightly from the crackling embers and flying spit of the fire with a shift in her feet, “I guess you’d better stay close to that fire then.” 

He chuckled at that, hot breath puffing like the rest of the steam in the forge and stopped his work to consider her, “Look who’s turned into a real _Lady_ then- orders and everything.”

Her smile faded a little from her cheeks, “I’m not a Lady.” 

_Had he really forgotten so much of her so easily?_ All the times since the first she told him she was highborn- only for him to tease her and bow.

He nodded, bringing down his hammer to the metal harder than before, “Of course, m’lady.” but his words were softer. 

She amended her previous thought- he hadn’t changed at _all_. He was still the teasing, bullheaded, dense man that he was at seventeen. The one she thought had refused to stay by her because it would somehow mean that she owned him- like a slave, another body to trade- like everyone else in his life did. But the only thing he was a slave to was his own determination.

_"You wouldn't be my family... you'd be m'lady."_ It was silly really- how little words could hurt as much as they did.

He looked into her eyes again, frame cranning to lean over the anvil, arms swinging with anchored strength as he did so, and instantly she knew that she at least occupied some space in that stubborn skull. A smirk found its way back to her face and she stuck her chin up, a quirk he instantly recognised, “Will you make me something?” she asked.

Kristoff scoffed, resuming his work on shaping the tip of the sword, “You’ve already got a sword, what else could you need?” he raised a brow to the blade at her hip. 

She so often felt that the rapier was a part of her body, the other half of her arm, that she forgot it was there. Her _needle_ , thin and sharp- like her- was the one thing that was unchanging in all her journeys, always finding its way back into dancing fingers. 

Anna rested a hand on its humble bronze pommel, “How did you earn a living at all in King’s Landing with _that_ for a sales pitch?”

Kristoff’s slick brow furrowed as he flipped the blade deftly with an ungloved hand to work at the other side, “I didn’t sell much to rich, little Ladies.”

She resisted reminding him who he _did_ forge and sell to- and pulled out a scrap piece of parchment from the inside of her cuff instead, “I need it stronger than these, though.” gesturing to the axes behind her.

He blinked up at her, straightening to full height and striding past her in a second, dunking the unfinished sword into the bucket as he passed it and leaving it there. Kristoff wrenched the same axe she had palmed from the rack and in one fluid motion, drove it into the surface of the heavy wooden bench. He turned to her, “They’re strong _enough_.” He took the paper from her anyways, looking over her crude drawing of a double-pointed spear, “You’re planning on fighting then are you?”

Anna smirked again, admiring how deep he drove the axe into the table, gloved fingers lingering on the handle, “ _Aren’t you?_ ”

He moved back to the anvil, pulling the cooled sword from the bucket, “Aye.” 

She watched him, studying every muscle in his expression, “You fought them?”

“I did.” Kristoff pushed the sword back into the coals of the forge fire.

She rolled her eyes at his indescriptive response, pressing, “How many?”

He looked over her shoulder at her, “A few- enough,” the warm light of the flames lit up the contour of his nose and its rough shape- shapes that flowed down his chin and jawline, jutting over wide shoulders and stretching across the plane of his back- his eyes sharp in a much different way, “I suspect I’ll fight a few more before long.”

Kristoff had been North of The Wall to see them, kill _a few_ of them but she knew he’d only keep details from her if they bothered him that much. Them- the monsters of winter that were on their way to destroy all life South of The Wall. They happened to be at the first castle the monsters would reach, so she found even less shame in drinking him in as much as she could for she might not know him another day. 

Something changed in his eyes and he left the fire side to stand in front of her, “I know you’re not scared of murderers or rapers or thieves- but this is different, Anna.” Kristoff lay a hand down on the anvil, “ _This is death_.” 

Anna let out a pent up breath but her eyes never left his, she hated seeing so much worry mixed in a place where she was so used to seeing warmth and strength and undying fury. Without looking, she dropped her own hand to the top of his offered one in front of her. Even through the leather of her glove she felt the swell of the wrought iron’s heat, mixed with that of his own. 

Their whisper of a moment was disturbed by a casted batch of freshly cured arrowheads being deposited on the table behind her and, with considerable hesitation, she pulled her hand away from him.

He sighed too, unhidden in the persistent cold air, and strode around her to inspect the arrowheads. She knew he was finished talking, certain that he had made his point- but she certainly had not. 

As he was about to pick up the second head for a once-over, she had reached under his arm and plucked up three from the table, “I’ve seen death,” His shoulders tensed and he turned, perhaps preparing to deliver some more harrowing words- but his open mouth stayed open, “behind so many faces.” 

Confusion replaced his annoyance and she solved both by throwing one arrowhead out to her side, finding its target in the centre of a support-beam. He leaned against the table, eyes glued to the spot on the beam where another arrowhead swiftly found a place just below it. Kristoff laughed once in a mixture of wonder and disbelief- or maybe it was realisation to what she had really been up to since they split ways, and his eyes found her's again. 

Anna smirked as his lips parted and eyes widened slightly as he was now the one to study her in a new light. She raised the last arrowhead between two fingers, “I look forward to seeing this one.” and she threw it, quick as the rest, to land with the others.

"my weapon?"

"I'll get right on it."


	2. Chapter 2

She wasn’t hard to find. Usually, she was the one who sought him out at her castle forge, checking in on the progress of her weapon-- not that he minded on either account, they had what was probably little time in this world left and he wasn’t about to waste it only thinking about hammering steel.

Night was falling, and the monsters of winter would fall upon them all soon, and instead of raising last tankards in the hall or bidding a final string of prayers to any of the Gods, Anna was shooting arrows by candlelight. Each one, making good on the canvas target she had pinned against a sack of wood shavings.

He barely stepped into her light when she turned around, a notched arrow still between her fingers. And for a little moment, neither of them said a word- decidedly an ineffective way of getting his thoughts out. 

But, whether intentionally or not, she saved him from stumbling over words, “Is that for me?” She pointed to the spear in her hand, which he handed over easily. Once it was in her hands it looked twice as big as her, but she saved him from the fear that he’d made it too long when she spun it in her hands, “This’ll work.”

Kristoff could have turned and left at that, could have joined some men for a drink or waited to catch sight of the first faces of his death from the wall, but he didn’t. “When you last saw me, you wanted me to come with you to your home.”

_“I could be your family.”_ Every day after he heard those words from her he wished he would hear them again. As every day since then he regretted not following her to the edge of the world just to be that to her.

“I guess I took the long road but- I’m here.” 

The memories of their departure flashed in his mind and he saw the same ripple behind her eyes as she recalled them too. 

“What did the Red Witch want with you?” She asked.

Kristoff swallowed, “My blood- some kind of magic.” There was no point in not telling her, the truth behind his birth wouldn’t be worth much in a few hours, “I’m the late King’s bastard.” Anna froze, the spear still in her hand, eyes wide as she looked up to him. It reminded him of when she revealed her real name to him, had he looked as unreadable then? “I didn’t know until she told me. Th-Then she tied me up, stripped me down and covered me in leeches from my neck to my--”

Anna interrupted him,“Your first time?” 

He half scoffed at that, “uh- yeah, I’ve never had leeches all over me.”

She shook her head, “Your first time _with a woman_?” That little eyebrow raising.

“I wasn’t _with_ her-” he felt his face heat up. That night had burned itself into his memory along with the smell of the leeches burning over the fire she lit for her magic. _“King’s blood is powerful.”_ she had told him as she pulled each of those black worms off of him slowly and threw them into the flames, naming a traitor or usurper each time.

“Were you with other women? Before then? _Or after_?” 

He truly did hate questions, spent his life answering those asked by Hands of the King and highborns and entitled knights, torturers and witches and silly little boys. And, as he had come to expect now, anyone who asked him questions ended up dead sooner or later. He didn’t want to curse Anna with this fate, but she’d outlived the rest so far. 

Maybe she didn’t see death behind _his_ face.

“ _Yes_ .” Kristoff knew that short answers annoyed _her_ but he was a fool if he thought that would stop her from persisting. 

And she did, “How many? One? Two? _Twenty_?”

“Look-- I didn’t keep count.”

Anna looked at him, eyes free from any hint of a jest or playful emotion that he was certain he remembered there being seven years ago, “Yes you did.”

He let out a long sigh. _What would the truth be worth in a few hours?_ “Three.”

Three women in King’s Landing. The first he took after he got off his boat, arms sore and heart racing with the adrenaline that he got from escaping what would have been his death sentence. She had yellow hair, paler than his own, and eyes that sparkled like fresh water. 

Before then, he had stayed far from brothels and averted his eyes when whores and tavern wenches would bend and flutter at him as they did to other men. It wasn’t that he never wanted to be with a woman, but remembering his mother and his fatherless boyhood- he couldn’t think of a worse thing to do than add another spoke to that wheel. The Boy King, the _illegitimate_ King, had ordered the murder of all the late King’s bastard children- of which he was one of- due to the power in their blood over his own. Bastards were never safe from anyone’s hand.

But even with the fear of getting this blonde woman pregnant, he lay with her. And lay awake in his cot every night for a week after that. 

The hammer in his hand grounded him again, the other half of his arm, he was himself again- not a scruffy lad on the run or a King’s bastard for trade- he could beat his fury and anger into beautiful blades and armor for those who would have him killed if they knew his name. And he did. 

The other two women came regularly after that, easier than that, but there was a stirring in him that he was unable to shake or release, eating at him everyday until he was called to go North to aid Anna and her family and their cause.

And now he stood before what he had come to realise was the thing that devoured him. The thing that no hammer could beat from him and no woman or fine crafted armor could fill. 

Anna hummed, his answer finally good enough, the sound fading with the step she took towards him. She had left her new spear leaning against the wall with her bow, and tugged off her gloves.

Kristoff’s breath caught in his throat as she looked up at him, piercing, blue eyes staring right through his entire body. Eyes alone that put any other woman to shame in this world or the next.

Anna was close enough to him that he could feel the breeze of her words on his chin before they spilt from her lips, “I want to know what it’s like before we die tonight.”

In a blink his vision turned to a blur, everything but her faded out around him, “Anna, I--” Whatever he had originally planned to say died against the crash of her lips. 

The girl she used to be died too, his version of Anna that was too little, and young, vanished behind the woman that she was now. _Not a Lady- a woman._ A woman no longer overzealous or dying to prove herself to anyone and everyone more than twice her size, she was effortlessly strong now, in mind and body. And he’d gladly worship her for that alone.

He smiled and fell against her, all his hesitations falling faster. Anna’s hands mapped over his cheeks and traveled back to the skin on the nape of his neck.

How many times had he been ready to fight at her side and jump in the way to protect her from even herself? How many times had he wished that she wasn’t a Lord’s daughter, or that he could somehow earn the right to feel the way he did about her? This was death, his curse onto others- but for once, this death led to rebirth- and she was his phoenix. 

By the time Kristoff found himself back in the moment, he was aware of more than the feather-light sweep of her lips against his- his own hands cradled under the curve of her arms.

Kristoff had never held anything so light and soft that was as strong as the great war hammer he spent years forging. How could hands as rough and brutish as his own pretend to be graceful or gentle? But still, with each time Anna kissed him, she pulled this softness out of him, a willingness to be explored and conquered by her own hands.

She pushed his heavy cloak off of his shoulders with the same fingers that came quickly back around to fiddle with the binding strings of her heavy outtershirt. 

He’d sworn to his own pride that he’d never serve anyone again, not Lords or Ladies or secretive comrades - but she was no Lady. 

Kristoff craned further into her, kissing somewhere under her ear, and brushed her trembling hands with his own.

He opened his eyes, willing whatever power his blood held to surge into her and keep her warm for the rest of her days. Blue eyes fluttered back to meet his own and he saw no coldness. Only fire.

His hands took over the job of her own, fumbling at first but as he made his way down the centre of her outtershirt, each eyelet was unlaced quicker. Anna worked at his own outer layer that came off before her own as it had fewer fastenings.

She wasn’t wearing her dagger or her Needle on her belt so when he tugged it from her, it fell softer to the ground, without the harsh clattering of steel on cobblestone. Anna’s hands stayed mostly to the sides of his face but once she had managed to unburden him from his leather shirt, she immediately tugged the hem of his linen shirt up his stomach, stealing burning kisses with greed all the while.

And once that was off too, he’d only begun to trail his lips down her throat and cup the back of her head, when she pushed him back to fall into the pile of filled burlap sacks that were piled against the wall. 

Kristoff almost reached out to her to pull her to him but her hands grasped the tuck of her own thin shirt and he was frozen, choked on his own breath, for the second time that night.

The wall mounted sconce that lit her from behind made her glow even more- he almost converted instantly to The Lord of Light’s following if it didn’t condone the actions that lead near enough to his death. But she was the fire, light and life, and fires gave birth to shadows- like himself, cast from darkness and coldness and death. 

But then again, he’d _seen_ the power of the Lord of Light- a Lord that turned cold swords into steel, flaming tongues and even brought men back from the dead. She was all of this- but she was no Lord, nor Lady. 

No religion gave the true goddess before him a name; not the Faith of the Seven- for she was so much more courageous and strong than The Warrior, not the Old Gods of the Forest- she was more than what lay in nature’s beauty and order. 

If tonight, here before her, was his last moment, a last prayer, he’d devote it all to Anna. And perhaps when he awoke without his body the next day he’d finally know if heaven really was better than what this world had to offer him.

Anna had worked her shirt from its bounds in her trousers while he looked up at her, mouth agape with little more than selfish prayers on his silent, parted lips. And slowly, arms bent, she rolled the cloth up her stomach. 

Kristoff found her almost careful movements odd-- until the fabric crept up to just below her sternum.

Along the gentle valley of her hip were ghastly, scarred lines that crawled up and around her stomach. They were long healed but looked as if they’d never leave her, glossy in the light of the fire to the point that they almost looked to be weeping still.  
Kristoff couldn’t rip his eyes from them. He lay there, free of any scar or wound that wasn’t token to his hard work- or well remembered accidents; and there she was, with marks he could only attach to their years apart, violence and pain. Years he didn’t know what dangers she faced or the faces and hands that bid her such harm. 

He wasn’t left long to contemplate them with a furrowed brow as the shirt was soon pulled completely from her and discarded among the growing pile. 

He forced his eyes from those offensive marks, and up, over the peaks of her breasts. There were no other stark wounds against her soft skin so he relaxed somewhat. 

Anna’s eyes roamed over him, across his bare chest and arms, and further down him to the tent in his breeches. 

Those eyes were as dark as the Blackwater when they came back to his own. That sly brow raised again, “I’m not the Red Witch… take your own bloody pants off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big thanks to Jae for helping me find my groove in smut writing! I couldn't have written this without her xx


	3. Chapter 3

_ Elsa was at Anna’s side on the wall but when she turned, her white-haired sister was gone. She was a Queen of Ice, true heir to The North and the Realm, IceStorm-born; Anna was Summer-born, hair like tumbling molten fire. By the law of the Old Gods, they shouldn’t have gotten along- but a sister’s bond was stronger than the will of Gods. _

_ Yet Anna couldn’t see her anywhere.  _

_ She was a fighter, not the kind to hide in the crypt- not when this was her war they were all fighting.  _

_ If Anna still prayed she’d clasp her hands right then to will Gods, new and old, to send her older sister into battle on the back of her last white dragon and win it in a blaze of blue fire. _

_ But the black sky stayed silent and empty, yet to be filled with only more smoke and the stench and wails of all those who would die this night- and join the dead army in the morning. _

_ “Hold the wall!” Anna called, and her voice was echoed twice in confirmation. The archers on either side of her notched and drew flaming arrows, the soldiers, smallfolk, wildings -men and women- in the courtyard of the keep drew weapons of all sizes. _

_ She held up a fist, the other drawn tight around her spear, “Loose!” Anna called. Like a wave of fire, the arrows shot across the sky, lighting up the herd of winter monsters as they swarmed closer to the castle. _

-

His voice burned with the echo of his spent shouts of war and fury but the men and women around him were true to theirs. They raised goblets and tankards and horns in drunken celebration for the war they’d won. Kristoff didn’t join them, the sight of row after row of towering, piled pires had refused to leave his mind long after they were all lit. Unbound wails carried with the smoke from those structures into the black sky as people around him wept and mourned the bodies of those who had fought to the extent of their own strength, many much bigger than he, and died anyways. 

At least these would not return.

That alone should have made it better, he supposed. But alas- he had no family among them. His blood was dead and dead long ago. He had no one to weep for or with, so he settled to keep his chin high and face the smell and sight of burning flesh to honor those around him. 

Anna’s body was not among them- that, he was sure of. He saw her for a second, beside her white-haired sister as they ordered the lighting of the pires and then she was gone again.

And the time he saw her before that- after  _ that _ \- her face was covered in blood and she was swinging her spear from side to side like a dance. 

-

_ He waited until he could feel the decaying breath of the monster coming up the wall before he delivered a heavy blow into the thing’s chest. It fell back from the wall, finally a useless heap of half fleshed bone, only to be replaced by the face of two more. _

_ They flooded the castle grounds in seconds, spewing over the walls and already claiming lives.  _

-

Giving up on picking her out among the faces in the hall, he sat down and plucked up a pitcher of ale to fill his cup. Maren, the one they called ‘The Hound’ was across from him, taking her fill of a bowl of soup and ignoring the festivities in the room.

The Hound had traveled with Anna for some time on her journey from what he had heard after he left her for King’s Landing. She was a great, lumbering woman more deserving of the nickname ‘Bull’ than he. Her swords never had to be sharp as her tongue as, by tale, she only needed to punch a man for his guts to spill from his body. Maybe she had kept Anna safe for some time, she was more than capable, but he remembered those violent scars on Anna’s body and didn’t know what to think. Anna certainly hadn’t learnt her sword dance or arrowhead throwing skills from The Hound- for she favoured brute strength behind each swing of her sword- so he wondered again on the details of Anna’s journey and whether she'd ever relay them to him.

Maren wasn’t from any noble house as far as he knew, but she had served two Kings in the capital before fleeing with a particular white-haired ward under her cloak soon after the battle on the Blackwater. Kristoff had seen the way that this  _ Hound _ looked at the same white-haired woman- granted, she was her Queen now but her eyes betrayed her. She looked at that woman like she had always seen a crown on her pretty head- Kristoff knew the feeling.

Kristoff preferred to look at the mass of burning candles on the table as he asked, “Have you seen Anna?” 

Maren looked up at him, expression reeking of irritance. Her spoonful of chicken broth fell back into her bowl, “You can still smell the burning bodies and  _ that’s _ all you think about?”

Kristoff looked at her then, “I just wanted to thank her for-”

Maren scoffed, “I’m sure you do.”

“Look,” his hands came up to offer defence, “it’s not about that-”

“Of course it’s about that, you twat.” Her hand scooped up the great horn of ale beside her and she downed a swig. “And why wouldn’t it be? The dead are dead- you’re not.”

And so they were- finally- and for the last time.

He sighed, the ale in his hand no longer interesting, and swung his legs over the bench to leave the table. 

He hadn’t seen Anna since he was  _ with _ her- it was almost as if whatever had happened between her and the swarm of winter monsters that flooded the castle was a blur. 

It was only meant to be a final farewell, the only part of her that she could give to him before she died. ‘ _ Or the only thing she didn’t want to take with her when she left this world’ _ he thought.

But amidst all the blood and death and the dead she had found him again.

-

_ “Kristoff!” Her shout fought for volume among the screams of war and loss around them. _

_ With a heavy blow, he cut down the dead man before him to see her run to him, blood smeared across her cheeks and spear raised high above her head.  _

_ He halved her distance and took off towards her, knocking down any monster that got between them. _

-

She did not turn to watch him invade her space this time as he approached her from behind.

He cleared his throat, his informal preference of announcing himself, “We won the war, it’s freezing, and everybody’s inside celebrating- your white-haired sister toasted to you, you should be in there to celebrate with them.” 

To say that Anna fought well was a gross understatement. Her head count for the night could only have been matched by her sister who swooped in on dragon-back to roast what was left of the dead horde. 

She would have stuck her knife into the stomach of the leader of the dead monsters if it were not for the dragon fire that beat her to the final blow. 

But Anna was unfazed by her place as second hero to the War of the Winter Monsters, she never wanted glory or a saviours’ title, “This is only the end to one war, the real war still waits in the South.” She loosed another arrow into the target. 

“That war isn’t yours to fight.”

Anna looked at him, “My sister will be marching South with what’s left of us to take back King’s Landing… and I’ll be going too.”

Here, in familiar light that brought fresh memories of lust and passionate carelessness, she appreciated him differently. He had proven himself strong in the battle, a great figure of a swinging hammer and burning eyes that lit her way in the fogs of war. A new scar, one that disturbed the skin of his lips was pronounced to her as he spoke, “Why?” 

Everything about this newfound softness of him, the one that she had found somehow to pierce from the depths of his eyes so that it exuded in every fiber of his presence, made her want to give way to her stern facade and submit to his warmness. But her agenda spoke for her, a desire that went beyond flesh and human desire, “King Hans is on my list.” 

Anna realised some time ago that what she  _ really _ was starved for was revenge. Not for the touch of pretty men or women or the offerings of love- Revenge on the man and the family who killed her father, imprisoned and abused her sister, hunted for  _ her _ .

She kept track of similar men with a list that grew each night, repeating it to herself like a lullaby, a prayer- a promise. Names didn’t stay on her list long.

“And then what? After the King is dead and your sister sits on the Iron Throne with her white dragon at her feet- then what?” 

Anna sighed, quietly but a sigh all the same, “I don’t know. There’s not much for me in Westeros.” 

“Not your family?” 

Anna looked at him fully then, pivoting her whole body to face him and all his denseness. She supposed that to a bastard boy, even a cold sister called Queen and little other blood qualified as  _ family _ . 

He must’ve remembered his infamous parting quote to her because his eyes widened and she was almost certain that she could hear his heart pound the blood into his brain from where she stood, “Look- I didn’t know what I wanted then… but- I do know that if that boy from seven years ago were still here right now, I would’ve taken the Lordship the Queen offered me.”

It was Anna’s turn to be shocked, “She offered you a  _ Lordship? _ ” It wasn’t unheard of for her sister to hand out titles and Lordships, after all, it established allegiances that would ensure loyalties to her future on the Iron Throne, but to give one to  _ Kristoff _ \- the bastard son of the family that Elsa sought to snuff out- she must’ve had ulterior motives. 

Then again she was thankful that upon learning the history in Kristoff’s blood her sister hadn’t immediately called for his head.

“Aye, but Anna- It took me seven years to realise that what I wanted wasn’t a highborn name instead of a bastard’s- or a castle or land.” 

“And what did you find to be the thing you wanted?”

“You.”

Anna didn’t know what she expected him to say but it certainly wasn’t  _ that _ . Her bow slipped through her fingers and clattered onto the floor, forgotten, as he came forward and stole a kiss from her agape lips.

She felt like that girl that existed far before seven years ago- scared, small, naive- remembered all those stories she grew up hearing and hating, princes and princesses and noblemen winning the hearts of pretty maidens- stories her sister openly scoffed at. And somehow, somewhere, she was convinced that those stories were for dreamers, not her. Romance made warriors weak- love itself was a weakness- and she  _ was _ a warrior, a fighter. There was no room for both-  _ or so she thought was true _ .

But Kristoff knew this, he knew she wasn’t a Lady by any stretch of the word- he had never seen her in skirts or with flowers in her hair of powder on her face but he  _ wanted _ her- bloody Needle, trousers and all. 

Anna shamed the blood that rushed to her cheeks as he parted from her and addressed every one of her troubling thoughts in a raw spiel of his own, “I know you’re not a Lady; but you are beautiful and strong and fierce and I love you- and none of it would’ve been worth anything- not years of fighting and death and hope- not surviving the war of the dead if you weren’t with me right now…” He stepped closer to her, eyes kindled in brilliance and a purity of emotion foreign to her, “So be with me.” 

Kristoff shifted, smile not wavering for a second and he fell to one knee before her, “Be my wife.”

She saw it all; a life on the waves, sailing far away from an empty home that was promised in Westeros, a life where she wasn’t a noble Lady. A dead King’s blood fresh on her hands, a promise kept. 

A life where there was no law of Gods or Kings or Queens- where a ship was her kingdom and the horizon was her fate; new lands, unfound people and life… and a golden-haired, hammer-wielding man standing on the Quarterdeck.

Tears clouded her vision but her judgement was clear as the light that began to bleed into the sky. And she nodded, “The only lady I’ll ever be is yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end! 
> 
> I hope those that read this tiny lil au three part one-shot enjoyed it because it would have burned a hole in my brain if I didn't get it out!!!  
> (also like it's totally a fix-it-fic in disguise for the gendrya ending in the show because HELLO no thanks)
> 
> and although this story has flaws its the first smut inclusive, war scene having fic that I've both finished and published so cue me giving myself a pat on the back x


End file.
